


Forget This, Too

by Deannie



Category: The Losers - All Media Types
Genre: Domestic Violence, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-09-16
Updated: 2014-09-16
Packaged: 2018-02-17 16:31:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,147
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2316134
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Deannie/pseuds/Deannie
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Six years ago, Jenny and Beth Parsons of Saginaw, Michigan, became Jenny and Beth Wilson of Nashua, New Hampshire. Jake Jensen kind of wanted them to stay there, but Jenny's husband had other ideas.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Forget This, Too

**Author's Note:**

> The first part of this story is a prompt from 221Browncoat over at The Beta Branch. The rest is all me, so don't blame her!

* * *

 

Clay sighed as his phone rang for the third time in a row.

"You gonna answer that?" Aisha asked.

"Yeah," Clay answered, reluctantly reaching for his phone. He didn't recognize the number. "Hello?"

He didn't hear an answer from the other end, just a sniffling sound, like someone crying.

"Who is this?" he said sharply. He was surprised to be answered by a young girl.

"Is...is this Clay?" she asked tearfully.

"Yes. Who is this?" He tried to be more gentle this time.

The girl broke down into sobs.

"I, uh...I didn't know what else to do. Uncle Jake said, if anything happened, I was to call you."

* * *

 

Clay straightened up. “Beth?”

“Yeah,” came the tiny reply. “Uncle Jake, um… He was—my dad came and…”

Clay grabbed the notepad on the bedside table and wrote: _Get Coug and Pooch NOW. Say Harry found them._ Harry should still be rotting in jail in Michigan. What the hell?

“Beth, honey,” he said quietly, listening with one ear while Aisha called the others. “Why don’t you tell me what happened?” He smiled, hoping the look somehow translated down the line. “Where’s your mom?”

“I think he took her,” she whispered. “My dad.”

“ _Shit,_ ” Clay muttered as quietly as he could. “Are you safe, sweetie? Where’s your Uncle Jake?”

“I’m at Mrs. Cavanagh’s. I’m okay. Mom told me to run so I ran, but my dad…” She started crying again. “Mom said Uncle Jake would get me soon, but he didn’t come and I didn’t know who to call and he said if we ever needed help you’d help and you will, right?”

“I will, honey,” he murmured, trying to calm her rising hysteria. What was she—eight? Nine, maybe? Too damn young for this. “I will, I promise.” He looked up when Aisha shoved a piece of paper in his face. It had one word: _Coming_. He nodded his understanding. “Beth, can I talk to Mrs. Cavanagh?”

“Yeah, um… Yeah.”

There was silence on the line for a moment before a no nonsense voice was blunt in his ear.

“Who is this?” He would’ve smiled if the situation hadn’t been such complete shit. Trust a Jensen to find the hardass in the neighborhood and befriend her. Jenny was no idiot.

“Franklin Clay, ma’am,” he replied, matching her tone. “I’m Beth’s uncle’s commanding officer.”

“Jake’s a good man,” she said, calming immediately. “Jenny always told me if Beth showed up on my doorstep I was to guard her with my life until he showed up to get her.”

“I aim to make sure that happens ma’am,” he assured her. “Is she safe there?” He didn’t think they could track Harry, save Jenny, and stop Jake from killing his son of a bitch brother-in-law with Beth in tow.

“I’ve got a couple of pistols that’ll make sure she is,” Mrs. Cavanagh replied. Sounded like one tough old bird.

“Can I get your address?” He wrote it on another piece of hotel stationery. “We’ll be there by sundown, ma’am.”

Well, most of them would anyway—thank God they were still in Manhattan, tracking down the latest lead on Max. Pooch was at home in Springfield—they’d pick him up on their way to Nashua. He had no idea where Cougar was, but they were going to need his help to talk Jake down. Jake had stopped himself from killing Harry Parsons six years ago, but now, with the Losers officially dead? He had absolutely nothing to lose.

“Shit.”

He started throwing his crap in a bag. “Come on,” he commanded, not really caring if she complied or not. “We’re going.”

She glared at him to let him know that she was doing this because she wanted to, not because he told her to, and started dumping her own crap in a bag. “Who’s Harry?”

Clay zipped his bag closed. Even after ten months of working together, Jake didn’t quite trust Aisha. Clay wasn’t sure Jake’d want her to know this story, but she deserved to know what she was getting into. “I’ll tell you on the way.”

* * * * *

Aisha had been patient long enough. They’d been driving for two hours and had just crossed the border from Connecticut into Massachusetts and all Clay had done was clench his jaw a lot and ask where Cougar was and how long he thought it’d take him to get to New Hampshire. He was in Pittsburgh visiting an old friend, or sniper buddy, or whatever, and his flight would land in Boston at 6:00. They’d pick him up too and Clay and his men would face whatever was happening as a united front.

“You gonna tell me who we’re out to kill, or do I get to guess?”

Clay took a deep breath. Looked like maybe this was a story he didn’t want to tell. Or didn’t think he had a right to tell. She prepared herself for redaction.

“You met Jenny and Beth,” he started. “Harry Parsons is Jenny’s husband.”

“ _Is_ , not was?”

“Hard to get a guy to sign the divorce papers when he’s trying to kidnap your daughter and/or kill you,” Clay replied tightly. “You can imagine how well that sat with Jake.”

Aisha just nodded. She was surprised he hadn’t killed the guy already. She would have.

“He was always an asshole, but once Beth came along, he got worse.” Clay changed lanes more violently than he needed to. “We came back from an op in the Sudan—Jake had been shot up and he had R&R coming, so he went to stay with them; help out with Beth, who was about three at the time.” He ground his teeth. “Jenny had ‘fallen’. Broke her arm in two places.” He gave a feral grin as they merged onto another highway. “Harry busted three ribs and his collarbone while Jake was there.”

Aisha smiled, impressed. “Clumsy family.”

Clay smirked and continued. “Jake got Jenny to put a restraining order on him, but he refused to even agree to a legal separation. Just disappeared. Shit didn’t hit the fan until about six months later. Luckily we were stateside. Jenny called Jake in a panic. Harry had picked Beth up from daycare and disappeared with her.”

“You tracked him down,” she said confidently.

Clay’s answering snort was bitter. “I didn't do anything. Asshole didn’t even tell us she’d called. Just disappeared for three days and suddenly Jenny and Beth Parsons of Saginaw, Michigan, are Jenny and Beth Wilson of Nashua, New Hampshire. Harry Parsons is going up for aggravated assault and kidnapping and Jake’s got a knife wound in his gut.”

 _Should’ve killed the bastard when he could,_ she thought. But she figured that wasn’t Jensen’s style. Pity.

“Jake’s been monitoring things pretty much ever since. Even with all the other shit we’ve been through. Guess he just didn’t want to see Jenny end up following in their parents’ footsteps.” He shook his head and Aisha barely heard his next words. “Why the fuck didn’t he call us this time?”

Aisha wouldn’t have called if she was him. The only thing the Losers were likely to do was prevent him from doing what had to be done. That was why they were driving like a bat out of hell right now, after all, wasn’t it? Hard to get revenge if your “friends” keep trying to save you from yourself.

“His parents were really that bad?” she asked, pretending she hadn’t heard the last bit. “I figured he was kidding.”

Clay snorted and smiled. “So did we, at first. Turns out the Jensen family was well-known in Saginaw, at least to the police and the ERs.” He sighed, remembering exactly how they’d all found out the Jensen family secret. “He comes by his distrust of the nuclear family honestly. Took him a while to stop waiting for guns and knives to come out when we’d go to Pooch and Jolene’s barbeques.”

Aisha was suddenly reminded that, before Bolivia, these men were a unit. A family. They had barbeques and met each other’s parents and girlfriends and swapped stories over beers and lived lives as normal as black ops work could let them be. She wondered what that was like.

“Wait, you’d never met Beth when we went up there for that soccer game.”

“Haven’t seen her since she was about two,” Clay corrected her. “Jake made sure to keep them at arm’s length—he’s always been paranoid that Harry would track him and find them. Bastard only got fifteen years.” Which brought up the point of how Harry _did_ find them, and why none of Jake’s tin-can alarms went off when he got out. “Jake never did get to see much of them. At least face to face. He and Carlos would sneak up there when they could, but…” He shrugged. About the only good thing their “deaths” had brought about was Jake’s off-grid freedom to watch his niece grow up. “Hell of a way to visit family.”

They lapsed into silence, and Aisha looked out the window at the New England scenery. Jake Jensen was clearly not the man she’d thought he was. He was deadly when he needed to be, no doubt, but he was normally just so… soft. Carefree. On the outside. Clearly something else was churning underneath.

A sign for Springfield flashed past on the side of the road, and she sat up a bit. She found herself hoping Jensen was okay. She hoped Clay or Pooch or hell, even Cougar, didn’t kill him once they found him, because she was surprised to realize that she was actually kind of interested in learning more about what made him tick.

* * * * * *

When they got to Mrs. Cavanagh’s house, the woman who answered the door and showed them into the parlor was short and round and didn’t seem like she’d be able to hold off a Girl Scout troop, much less a man like Harry Parsons. But then she sat them down and gave them tea and raked her gaze over the four of them like she was analyzing a tactical threat, and Carlos suddenly felt much better about Beth’s safety.

“You’d be Cougar,” she said, surprising him. He nodded silently and she smiled. “Jenny thinks the world of you. If you’re trying to find them, they’re in good hands.”

Aisha shot him a small grin and Carlos frowned back. It was not the time for teasing.

“How much did Jenny tell you about her husband?” Clay asked.

Mrs. Cavanagh snorted. “He’s an asshole who beats his wife and then tries to steal her child. What more do I need to know?"

Clay smiled coldly. “That’s about right.” He leaned forward and Carlos saw the concern in his colonel’s eyes. “How is Beth? We need as much information as we can get, but…”

“Beth is a strong girl. She’ll tell you what she can,” she said confidently. “Beth!” The sudden shout had them all startled. They were jumpy. That was a bad thing to be at the start of an op. And Carlos didn’t kid himself: this was a military operation. The last eighteen months had changed Jake more than most people suspected. He wouldn’t let the law stop him this time—it would be strictly retrieve and eliminate.

Beth Wilson, nervous and scared and far too young for any of this, pelted down the stairs as if she’d been listening at the top, waiting for the chance to make her entrance. He’d seen her only months ago, but she seemed older. Life could age you like that, too young.

It was one thing Jensen had never wanted for Beth.

“Colonel,” she greeted Clay shyly, sitting on the couch next to Mrs. Cavanagh. She looked at the rest of them in turn. “You’re going to go after them, right?” Her eyes brimmed suddenly with tears and she kept her gaze on Carlos himself. “You’ll stop him… My dad?”

Carlos’s heart broke for her. No child should hate a parent, but the venom in Beth’s voice was obvious. “We will,” he answered her quietly. “We promise.”

He sat and watched as Clay drew out all the information he could from her. It wasn’t much—this morning, Jenny had looked out the window to see Harry watching the house. She’d been calling Jake as Beth grabbed her backpack and ran out the back door. Beth said Jake had promised to make her track meet today, so he must have been close.

Damn it, what was he thinking, going off by himself again? He knew Clay and Aisha were close by—Pooch could have been here in a couple of hours. Why hadn’t he called in backup? Jake thought of them as family now, Carlos knew that. It shouldn’t be like Michigan.

> “I’m taking a few days, Colonel,” Jake’d said, sounding so normal that none of them had thought anything of it. “Might go up and see Jenny. Maybe even that asshole husband of hers.” Looking back, Carlos was sure there must have been a deadly glare when he spoke that last line, but they just hadn’t been paying attention. They’d been a good unit—two years and too many near-death experiences under their belts—but they hadn’t been family yet. At least not from Jake’s point of view.
> 
> He’d been pale as a ghost when he returned, and the knife wound was serious enough to delay their next deployment. It was only one reason Clay had been blindingly angry with him.
> 
> Asshole had just stumbled into the house they’d been given between ops, plopped down in a chair, and said, “Hey guys, what’d you do while I was gone?” like nothing had happened. Cougar had been the one to notice the blood that had seeped through his bandage.
> 
> “You don’t go in without backup, Jensen! Ever!” Clay had said, pacing restlessly in the base trauma center that had been their first stop once Carlos had gotten a good look at Jake’s belly. He’d been patched up in the nearby ER, but as soon as Parsons was in custody, he’d gone about finding a safe place for Jenny to start over and hadn’t given the deep and ugly wound a second thought.
> 
> He had been lucky he didn’t bleed to death. Half the stitches had popped somewhere between Nashua and Fort Meade and he was just too strung out by that point to notice.
> 
> “This wasn’t an op, sir,” Jake had said, clearly exhausted, but standing his ground. He’d looked up and met Clay’s eyes. “This was family.” There was a tone in his voice that Carlos didn’t understand until later: shame.
> 
> You could have heard a pin drop. Clay had stood there nearly a minute, just looking at him, before he nodded and walked out the door.
> 
> “Good going, asshole,” Roque had said mildly.
> 
> Jake had just thrown an arm over his eyes and muttered, “Shit.”

“Come on, Cougar,” Clay said, shaking him out of his memories. “We’ll check out Jenny’s place and get moving.”

Carlos nodded, rising and looking at Beth as she sat quiet and lost. Jake liked company and Carlos liked being it, so most times when Jake went off grid to visit Nashua, Carlos had come with him. He’d helped police Beth’s fifth birthday party and taught her to play lacrosse…

She shouldn’t look so lost.

“We will find them,” he promised her, letting her hug him tight before he followed the others out the door. His next words were too quiet to be heard by anyone. “And then I will kill your uncle for doing this to us again.”

* * * * *

Jenny and Beth lived a little better than your standard single-mother family where Mom was an IT tech at the local packaging plant. Jake lived a little poorer than a black ops soldier should, though, so it all evened out. He’d always joked he was investing in long-term care insurance—making sure Beth could succeed and afford to take care of him in his old age.

As if he believed he’d live that long.

The split-level ranch had a fair amount of land around it—enough that probably none of the neighbors would have heard anything if Parsons was smart enough not to use a gun. Clay shook his head, wishing Jenny could have been convinced to keep one of her own. That had apparently been one of the many arguments Jenny and Harry had had when they were together. Even Jake wasn’t allowed to bring his sidearm into her place.

After the last time—well after the yelling was over after the last time and Jensen spilled the whole story—Clay knew Parsons liked his knives and his fists more anyway. Bastard.

The front door looked intact from a distance, but the lock had been slammed in and a gentle push opened it. Clay broke Jenny’s cardinal rule and led with his Glock.

She'd put up one hell of a fight. The front hall was trashed. He motioned to the others to spread out and check for… anything.

“Got a bloody paperweight by the back door,” Aisha called quietly. “Probably went out this way.”

Clay walked into the kitchen and stopped dead by the counter. A knife block lay on its side the spaces for a butcher and a carving knife both empty. The cabinet and floor nearby were splattered with blood. Not a lot. Just enough to make his teeth hurt. There were smears through the blood on the ground and ragged bloody footprints leading out toward the back of the house.

“God damn it, Jensen,” he gritted angrily. “Don’t you ever learn?”

> After leaving the trauma center six years ago, Clay had gone out, wandered. Anywhere—it didn’t matter. He’d thought he was doing a pretty good job. Four guys no one really wanted, and he’d seen the potential in all of them.
> 
> Clay had spent two years molding them into a fighting unit that was starting to become the one they called when there was no one else to call. And with one look, Jake Jensen had thrown the whole thing back in his face.
> 
> _“This was family.”_
> 
> “Well fuck you, Jensen,” he remembered muttering to himself. “You don’t want to be a part of _this_ fucking family, then you can go to hell.”
> 
> Except of course, he’d turned around and been right back there at the trauma center in time to take Jensen home.
> 
> “I’m sorry, Colonel,” Jake had said the second he saw him, too doped up and sleepy and off-guard not to mean it. “It’s just… She’s all I have, you know? All I ever had, really.” He’d snorted painfully and Clay had gotten his first real inkling of how truly fucked up the Jensens were. “Fucking family.”
> 
> “You’ve got a new family here, soldier,” he’d replied, knowing he sounded like a God damned war movie, but unwilling to unsay the words.
> 
> “God, sir, I hope not,” Jake’d replied, nearly asleep on his feet and tactless because of it. “Was hoping we could all shoot the bad guys and not each other.”

“Boss?”

Cougar’s soft call had him striding into the dining room, leaving the memory behind.

The table clearly hadn’t been used for a meal this side of Christmas. It was covered in papers and school artwork, space carved out in the chaos for a laptop computer. The machine was open and Aisha was sitting in front of it. Cougar looked like he wanted to pace.

“He must not have gotten here before she was taken,” Aisha said. Clay blew out a sigh of relief. At least the blood in the kitchen wasn’t Jake’s, then. Problem was, it was probably Jenny’s which meant when Jake found them, Harry was a dead man. If he didn’t kill Jake first.

“He was tracking them with Jenny’s cellphone,” Cougar said, giving into the temptation finally and wandering back and forth behind Aisha as she tapped away on the keyboard. Pooch slid in the room and shook his head at Clay— _nothing else to find_ —and Clay got in next to Aisha and looked on as the computer redrew the map and showed a blinking light north of Little Falls in upstate New York.

“They’re not moving,” Clay said, watching the blip. They were close—maybe five hours away. Plenty of time for Jake to take care of his precious fucking family business.

Clay wasn’t even sure why he cared that much. Harry Parsons was scum. He was dangerous, violent, pathetic scum who’d rather beat his wife than get a real job. He didn’t really deserve to live, in Clay’s hard ass opinion.

Problem was, Jake didn’t deserve to live with the guilt of killing him. He’d said the last time he wasn’t his father and he wouldn’t become him, but he really hated Parsons.

And he really loved his sister. Clay wasn’t sure, after all they’d been through, whether Jenny would win out this time.

Aisha grabbed the laptop and headed out without question. Soundlessly, Cougar did what he’d been doing roughly every 45 minutes since they’d picked him up in Boston. He called Jake’s cellphone.

“I Will Survive” blared from somewhere in the back of the house.

“God _damn_ it!” Clay hissed, running for the sound. Pooch got there first. Jake’s cellphone lay wedged under the couch that stood too close to the blood-stained paperweight Aisha had found.

* * * * *

Pooch drove faster than he should, just slow enough not to get pulled over.

“Fucking computer,” Aisha whispered from the third row. “I can’t get a satellite link.”

“We’ll hope they stay put until we get there and deal with it if we have to,” Clay said tightly.

Cougar just sat in the shotgun seat and brooded.

“Can’t ever be easy with him, can it?” Pooch asked, not expecting and not getting an answer. Truth was, it couldn’t. Wasn’t Jake’s fault anymore than right now was Beth’s.

The cellphone that Cougar had in his pocket rankled. J was hurt, likely. And without comms. But fuck, man, this was the United States. He could stop and buy a freakin’ talk ‘n’ toss! If the moron went and got himself killed because he wouldn’t call them in, Pooch was gonna kill him.

> “The hell were you thinking?” Pooch had asked, dropping too many pills into Jake’s hand and offering him a glass of water. “You know you fucked up, man, right?”
> 
> Jake sighed, a blank look on his face that Pooch would come to recognize as Jensen pushed beyond exhaustion and/or pain. He’d seen it too many times in the last eight years. Hoped he’d see it again.
> 
> “She’s my sister, Pooch,” was all Jake could come up with.
> 
> “And we’re your God damned team,” he’d gritted back angrily. “Thinking maybe you don’t get what that means, so let me spell it out—”
> 
> “Please don’t.” It wasn’t begging. He clearly just didn’t care to hear it, whether Pooch kept going or not.
> 
> Pooch had stared at the utter apathy in Jake’s face. This wasn’t just about his sister. And he clearly wasn’t going to talk about it.
> 
> “All right, man, you know what? You lie there and you stew—and we’re still gonna be here when you haul your ass out, okay?” He’d pointed at him in reprimand. “And we’re gonna have a talk.”

It had been a day before Jake hauled his ass out, and no one liked what he had to say.

* * * * *

Little Falls was just that. Little. Pooch stopped for gas at one of three gas stations in the town, and Clay went in to pay and ask if they’d seen anything. Sounded like Harry had refueled here, but the attendant knew nothing; just that he might’ve seen him shortly after he started shift three hours ago.

They headed to the local coffee shop that boasted free wi-fi and Aisha set up the laptop.

“They haven’t moved.”

The satellite shot on the map program showed the blip nestled in thick forest, close to a lake. “Log the GPS. We need a printout of that,” Clay said quietly. Too many hours of inactivity were wearing on him. Too many hours of Jensen’s radio silence.

“You can print it out here,” one of the girls behind the counter called, in that obliviously friendly way that people in small towns had. “Cost you fifty cents a page, though.”

Clay smiled at her, letting her keep her innocence. Somebody should. “Thank you. That’d be very helpful.” He paused. “You wouldn’t have a local road map, would you? I'm trying to find a friend’s cabin, but you know computer maps—they’re never really up to date, are they?”

“We have a lot of cabins up by Crum Creek and along the lakes,” she told him helpfully, holding out a map and a slip of paper with the printer’s wireless access. “Probably out there.”

He flashed his best flirty grin. “Thanks so much for the help. You’re a lifesaver.”

He hoped.

Cougar's pocket gave out a bing and he pulled out Jake's phone. He cursed and very quietly read the alert on the lock page. "Michigan Sheriff Alert: Harold Parsons, escaped transfer from MSP. Guard down. Considered dangerous. ABP nationwide."

"Well that explains why Jake didn't know he was coming," Pooch said.

"Great," Clay sighed. "Both of them with nothing to lose. This doesn't end well."

He just hoped it ended worse for Harry than for Jake.

* * * * *

Jake was running mostly on adrenaline at this point. His head was throbbing, he was pissed as hell, and he could only hope he'd get there in time to stop Harry from following through on his threat.

Back when Jenny thought Harry wasn’t a wife-beating prick, she'd convinced Jake to come with them up to Harry's uncle’s cabin. Not knowing that Jake got too much nature in the average op, Harry had said he wanted to give them a chance to “really appreciate nature.” Whatever. The place was a dump. But right now, the tracking software on his phone said Jenny was in that dump. So that was where he was going.

His bloodied hand shook with anger and a little pain, maybe, as he pulled off the road a mile from the cabin—right along the creek, so he could follow it up and take Harry by surprise. He was going to kill him this time. No question. Last time, he’d pulled out of his own head long enough to think about Beth, and about Jenny—because as much as Jenny might’ve wanted Harry dead six years ago, she wouldn’t have really been okay with it. At least not the way it had almost happened.

But that was then. Jake was dead now—he didn't have a future to protect, really. Jenny had already had her future taken from her once. And Jake just wasn’t going to let Harry take it from her again. End of story.

He grabbed the carving knife off the passenger seat and slid out of the car, playing back the day in his mind to keep from giving in to exhaustion.

Jake had dropped his gear at the bus locker where he left it whenever he visited his sister’s gear-free house and was ten minutes out when his phone rang.

“Hey, sis—”

“He’s here, Jake,” she said. There was no question of who she meant. Jake tried to drive faster, but school was just starting and the streets were clogged with children and minivans. “Beth’s safe, but—”

“I’m coming. Right now.” He’d slammed a hand against the steering wheel and realized he’d make better time on foot. Pulling over and parking took more time than he wanted and his skin was crawling before he could be out and running hard. Eight years of the kinds of ops they ran left him cutting through the exurban landscape at a bird’s clip as he jumped fences and skirted lawns. He fetched up against the front window of Jenny’s house just in time to see Harry come at her with a butcher knife.

 _And wasn’t that just deja vu all over again?_ he thought coldly, trying not to remember that warehouse six years ago. He thought of something else instead. Like Sunday dinner at the Jensens—this was pretty much that, too.

Jenny didn’t have their mom’s violent impulses, but she had years of Jake’s self-defense lessons. Jake eased silently through the ruined front door, and Harry barked in pain as Jenny scored a solid blow to his throat. Not hard enough to take him down, unfortunately, but enough to make him back off a little.

“I’m gonna fucking kill you, Jenny,” Harry grated, his voice blunted by the hit.

Shit. Jensen pulled out the one knife he still had on him, knowing how much better Harry was with one, but unable to come up with much else to stop him. He darted forward, intent on taking him down hard and fast. He wasn't going to bother with niceties like letting him know he was coming. Eight years of the kind of ops they'd run had also taught him that.

Must have been a reflection in the stainless steel fridge that gave him away. Harry let go of Jenny long enough to fling his arm out in an arc that caught Jake at the wrist and sliced shallowly right up to his elbow, spraying blood across the kitchen. Jake was pissed enough, he honestly didn’t feel it at the time, though it stung like a son of a bitch now.

He didn’t have to tell Jenny to run—she was already halfway out the back door. Harry went after her, trying to grab her back, and Jake followed, catching Harry’s upper arm in an iron grip. Harry growled and brought his other hand up, swinging for Jake’s head.

Jake still wasn’t sure what Harry had hit him with, but it was a while before he blinked his eyes, and they were gone when he did.

He’d been running on instinct and fumes ever since: locking onto her phone, grabbing an extra knife, running back to the car to plow through toward New York... His head hadn’t cleared enough for him to even think to call Clay until he’d hit the state line, and by then it was a little late to go back for his fallen cellphone. He really wished he’d been clear-headed enough to go back for his guns, though, as he hefted the kitchen knife, feeling what was usually his boot knife dig into his hip where it sat, folded, in his pocket. God, he hated knives.

He slid down to the bank of the creek that barely warranted the name, struggling to keep it together as his head throbbed and his arm stung.

“God damn it, stay put!”

The angry bellow carried easily in the dark silence of the woods, and Jake fought not to relax in relief, knowing Jenny must still be alive. If he relaxed, he was going to pass out and that wasn’t going to help anyone.

He shook himself like a dog and kept on moving.

* * * * *

Carlos watched the woods as Pooch drove. Unlike Clay, he didn’t worry about what would happen if Jake killed Harry Parsons. Harry would be dead and Jenny would be safe, and that was all that mattered. They'd all learned lately that the enemy didn't always deserve mercy. Or even due process. Six years ago, Jake would have gone through hell if he hadn’t stopped himself.

Though it took them a couple of days to find out he’d already been to hell once before.

> The second day after Jake had come back from New Hampshire, he had tottered out into the kitchen and opened the refrigerator, closing it immediately and turning away. “What, you don’t shop when I’m gone?” he’d muttered, one arm wrapped around himself, guarding the still-tender sutures.
> 
> “Figured you could do it—you know, once you were done going off on your own damn business,” Roque replied, equally gruff.
> 
> “Figured you wouldn’t let me out of your sight that long,” Jake answered, not coldly, just… dull. Dead. Apathetic. “I’ll get my shit together and go out to—”
> 
> “Sit your ass down before you fall down,” Roque snapped. Carlos was surprised when Jake did just that.
> 
> They’d left him to himself yesterday after Pooch had come out of his bedroom pissed as hell and confused besides. Jake wasn’t a whole lot younger than Carlos himself, but Clay had taken to calling him “Kid” and the rest of them sort of adopted the idea if not the nickname. Everything was fun for him in a child-like sort of way. He was a carefree—sometimes care _less_ —little boy playing at special forces. The fact that, in the heat of the moment, he was an incredibly focused, deadly little boy just didn’t seem to change the perception. It was like Pooch’s teariness—a facet of their teammate that just was.
> 
> This—this quiet and empty and defensive man who refused to apologize for basically turning his back on them instead of asking for help—this just wasn’t Jensen.
> 
> Clay had walked in the front door with a box of supplies, Pooch coming in behind with some beer, and watched Jake closely as he set the box on the countertop. Carlos figured Clay saw what he saw—a man who needed to talk but sure as hell wasn’t going to—and wondered what their boss was going to do to get the ball rolling.
> 
> “Should we talk about this now, Jensen?” he’d asked, command in his no nonsense voice. He didn’t often take any of them to task, but if he wanted a sit down, you’d damn well better pay attention.
> 
> His tone, or maybe the fact that _he_ had said the words, made Jake sit up straight, hissing at the pain of the movement.
> 
> Which gave Clay his opening, Carlos saw, as their CO narrowed his eyes. “We’re standing down from the op in Islamabad,” he said, playing the guilt card ruthlessly. “Base medical wants you fit for duty before we’re clear to go back in the field. Turn your intell over to OpCom."
> 
> Jake brought his gaze up and met Clay’s for the first time since the trauma center. Carlos saw only a flicker of guilt, though. “I’m sorry, Colonel. I—”
> 
> “Shut up.” Clay held his gaze and Carlos exchanged an uneasy glance with Roque. Clay was revving up to something. “This doesn’t happen again, Jensen. Ever. Do you understand me?”
> 
> “Yes, sir.” There was almost life in the words. Almost.
> 
> “I want a full report, soldier,” Clay continued, riding over the sudden protest in Jake’s eyes. “Now. Or I don’t need you on this team.”
> 
> Carlos felt Pooch stiffen where he’d come up next to him. There was something here the rest of them didn’t know. They’d seen Clay pissed. Dangerously pissed. But not like this.
> 
> And none of them had _ever_ seen the response he got from Jake.
> 
> He stood up, drew himself to painful attention, and saluted. “Request immediate transfer. Sir.” But again, the tone was dangerously apathetic.
> 
> Clay shook his head, looking tired. “Sit the fuck down, Jake. You know we’re not doing this.” He raked a hand through his hair as Jensen soundlessly collapsed into the chair again. “Talk, kid. I read the report from the Saginaw PD. I want your side.”
> 
> Carlos looked at Pooch again, then Roque, but got confused shrugs in response. None of them had heard about the police report.
> 
> “My brother-in-law tried to kidnap his daughter. I stopped him.”
> 
> Clay shook his head. “Not good enough.” He sat down across the coffee table from Jake. “You beat the shit out of the guy with your bare hands.” The other three exchanges shocked looks. Of all of them, Jake was the least likely to lose his temper. “From the police report, you could’ve killed him.”
> 
> Jensen had tilted his head one way then the other, considering. “I could’ve.” They all knew it was true, they just couldn't believe he would do it.
> 
> Clay dismissed the flip answer with a look. “How’d he stay up long enough to get a knife in your gut?”
> 
> “Actually, he led with the knife," Jake began, a shadow of his usual self. "Though he didn’t manage to stab me until—”
> 
> “Cut the crap, Jensen. I know you, all right? You’ve taken down guys faster—hell, fast is how you like it—even when you're just disabling. Cut ‘em out of the op and leave them down. This was something else. What aren’t you telling us?”
> 
> Jake looked like he was going to keep fighting it, but something about the worry in Clay’s voice seemed to finally get through and he sighed painfully. “I told Jenny to stay at her place, wait for me. Like the jerk she is, of course she didn’t listen.” He took a deep breath. “When I got Beth free, Harry was standing there, blocking the door. He had a knife to Jenny’s throat. Said he’d slit it in front of Bethy.” He shrugged and smiled a wry, almost-Jensen smile. “I might have lost my shit slightly, sir.”
> 
> Clay had grinned for the first time since this started. “Slightly.” He paused a minute. “The police report doesn’t say anything about your sister being there.”
> 
> “Sir, our family name is all over the Saginaw PD ledgers. She didn’t need anymore.” He'd looked down at his hands and Carlos had seen that they were shaking slightly. From exhaustion or emotion, he couldn’t say. “She’s had enough—I just wanted her out.”
> 
> “You should have called for help. Jesus, if not the PD then _us_.”
> 
> “Yes, sir.”
> 
> “Don’t ‘yes, sir,’ me, Captain. What were you thinking going off on your own?”
> 
> “I wasn’t,” Jake admitted. "I didn't need to." At their collective questioning look, he sighed and slouched in the chair, head tilted back, his eyes finding the ceiling. “Imagine that,” he said dreamily. “Imagine being three and seeing your dad hold a knife to someone’s throat.” He tilted his head to look into Clay’s eyes. “Now imagine that person is an eight-year-old girl whose only crime is that she’s your big sister and you whine too damn much.”
> 
> He closed his eyes. “Bethy won’t be me. And I stopped because I won’t be him.”
> 
> After a long moment of stunned silence, Jake stood up and put his arm back around his stomach. “Can we please be done, sir? Saginaw said they wouldn’t press charges, I’m going back to testify at Harry’s trial when they set a date, so can we please just be done? I’m ready to forget this one, too.”

_”I’m ready to forget this one, too.”_

It was a phrase he’d heard Jake use a few times over the years, when something horrible happened. The only truly horrible thing he hadn’t used it for was Bolivia. Jake had gone out of his way to remember that. They all had.

Carlos hadn’t known whether Jake meant his father or Harry when he said he wouldn’t be him, but the revelation had rocked his view of his teammate in a way that took a while to come to grips with. They knew he’d had it bad as a kid, but they always kind of thought he’d been playing it up—he wasn’t any crazier than the rest of them, after all. It couldn’t have been that bad…

But maybe that was the trick for Jake. Just forget this one, too. Move on. Shut it away like Carlos did the faces of the people he’d killed, like Clay used to just accept a failed op—at least before Bolivia. Jake’s adrenaline junkie ways made more sense after that, and for a while after Saginaw, they’d had to rein him in from making any stupid moves. Took some time to regain his balance, but he did.

He must have always done it. Mostly alone, which explained something, too.

_”She’s all I have, you know? All I’ve ever had, really.”_

Except that now, Jake had another family. And they were coming.

“Car up here on the right,” Pooch called, slowing down and pulling in behind it.

* * * * *

The rental plates on the car made Pooch think it must be Jake’s, but he slid silently out of the driver’s side door and drew his weapon, while Cougar brought his rifle up to cover the sedan through the van's open passenger window. Clay and Aisha approached the car slowly, and Clay signaled all clear and opened the driver’s door. The van’s headlights highlighted the blood on the gray leather interior and Pooch cursed.

“Flashlight,” Clay barked, and Cougar opened the glove compartment and flipped the flashlight he found there out into Clay’s waiting hand. Pooch held his sidearm down but ready as Clay scouted the area in the dark.

“Footprints leading to the river,” he said shortly.

“According to the GPS, Jenny’s cellphone is about a half-mile up here,” Aisha said, pointing further down the road.

Clay straightened up and shut off the flashlight, leaving them in the uncertain light cast by the half moon and the van’s headlamps. “All right, Cougar and Pooch, head up along the river. We’ll assume Jake knows where he’s headed. Find him even if he doesn’t.” He looked at Aisha. “You and I’ll take the road.” He grinned, teeth flashing in the night. “Don’t kill him.”

“Harry or Jake?” Pooch asked, setting up the punchline because Jake wasn’t there for the early op levity.

“Yes,” Clay answered, and he and Aisha melted into the woods.

“I hate to disobey a direct order,” Cougar muttered beside him, a smile on his face, too.

Pooch headed for the river and turned north. “It’s okay, man. We’re not in the Army anymore. It’s not really an order, is it?”

Cougar chuckled and Pooch got to thinking maybe they’d figure all this out after all.

“JAKE!”

_Shit. So much for wishful thinking._

Pooch readied his sidearm and ran for the sound of Jenny’s voice.

* * * * *

“Shit! Okay, are you kidding me?” Jake asked, looking at the knife that stuck out of the cabin wall an inch from his left eye. “You’re _throwing_ knives now? Where’d you learn that, Mich State Pen?”

“You’re dead,” Harry said, as if he’d only just realized it. He always was a little slow. “Last year. I saw it on the news.”

“Fox News Channel, right?” Jake asked, trying to concentrate over the pounding of his pulse in his aching head. “Trusted news source? I think not.”

Jenny was tied to a chair in the middle of the room, sporting too many bruises and a few cuts, even, but looking not too much the worse for wear. She tried to smile at him, but her swollen lip made it look too wrong. He almost cheered at the black eye Harry had, though. She was a jerk, but she was a scrappy jerk. He really hoped she'd be smart enough to close her eyes when the time came.

Harry had another knife in his hand now and was headed toward Jenny’s chair. She whimpered in response. Jake threw his own boot knife, hiding his surprise when he actually landed the thing in Harry’s arm.

“You don’t get to hold a knife to her throat again, Harry,” he said quietly, watching Harry’s knife clatter to the ground. “Ever.”

Harry growled and pulled the knife from his own arm and headed for Jake like a bull. Jake sidestepped him easily, because basically, bulls are stupid. His brain was starting to fuzz, so Jake focused himself by whirling around and cracking both fists down on Harry’s back while he brought his knee up to meet Harry’s face.

Harry wasn’t thrilled.

Harry still had Jake’s knife, too, so it wasn’t too much of a surprise for Jake to hear Jenny scream his name while he felt the blade slide into his gut—pretty much right where the one six years ago had. Back then, the pain of it had rocked him on his heels and given Harry an opening that would have turned the fight if Harry had been in better shape at the time.

Six years later, Jake had a different idea of what pain was, and he channeled it instead, delivering a blow that finished breaking the cartilage in Harry’s nose and sent the man to the floor, wheezing and unconscious.

Jake shook his pounding head. Hadn’t Clay once scolded him for liking it fast? He could be right—fast was disappointing. He headed toward the body on the ground, tunneling vision zeroing in on the man's face. He’d _wanted_ to hurt Harry, no doubt, but he _needed_ to kill him.

“Jake?”

Jenny’s tiny plea threw him six years and five hundred miles away, but when he looked around vaguely, it was a cabin and not a warehouse, and there was only Jenny, tied to a chair. Beth was safe, this time. And away from the hate.

He looked back at Harry. He needed to end this.

“Jake? _Please?_ ”

Jenny sounded scared now—well, more scared. He looked at her and saw the terrified eight-year-old in her eyes; became that terrified three-year-old for just a second.

_”I stopped because I won’t be him.”_

_Huh,_ he thought blurrily. _I can’t believe that’s actually still true._

He crouched down carefully and reached out to grab the knife so he could just cut Jenny loose—

—and Harry reared up with a howl of anger and charged toward him.

A rifle shot rang out as Harry slammed sideways and hit the cabin wall, blood pouring from a new wound in his chest. Jake stood up, staring at the body in confusion.

“We’re clear, Boss.” Cougar called out.

Wait… Cougar?

Yep, there he was, looking blurry—had he lost his glasses somewhere?—but there, rifle in hand and at the ready, just like always. And Pooch came in behind him, heading for Jenny’s chair. Jake really was going to cut her loose. As soon as he could move.

But somehow she was free anyway and he wrapped his arms around her and let her cry on his shirt and he felt a little warmer for it. Thirty years ago it had been her with her chin on his head, letting him cry, but he’d grown from being that whiny three-year-old, hadn’t he?

Clay and Aisha came in the front door, sidearms down, and Clay looked at Harry for a long minute before he met Jake’s eyes. Even dizzy as he was, and he was pretty dizzy, actually, Jake knew exactly what he was asking.

“Suprisingly, sir,” he slurred, “I wasn’t going to kill him.” He shook his head at the sudden buzzing there. Jenny stepped back from him and said something. He didn’t understand what she said, but he was glad she’d moved, because he had a feeling he was about to fall down. “Well, I mean I _was_ going to kill him, at first, but then—”

“Cougar, catch him.”

And then Jake was on the floor, and he had no idea how that happened, but Cougar and Pooch were looming over him. He hoped they weren’t mad this time. This time, it wasn’t his fault.

“Sorry. Would've call. I lost my phone,” he said quietly. “I think it fell out at Jenny’s place. You didn’t find it, did you?”

Pooch chuckled. “Yeah, we found it.” He nodded to Cougar, who looked kind of serious. Probably not a good thing when he was doctoring, huh?

“Good. Don’t think I backed up the pictures of Angelina Jolie—saw her in the Hartford airport.” Jenny was running a hand through his hair, looking for bumps—phrenology, that was called—and he looked up at her. “I was gonna tell Beth—” Wow. That hurt. Cougar kept up the pressure on the hole in his gut and it hurt. A lot. “Ow. Was gonna tell Beth I shared a seat with her. She probably wouldn’t’ve believed me anyway.”

“Probably not, little brother,” she said tearfully. “Linwood, he’s got a knot here. A big one.”

“Why does she get to call you Linwood?” Jake asked. _He_ never got to call the Pooch Linwood. Not that he would. Who names their kid Linwood, anyway?

“Because _she’s_ pretty,” Pooch joked. He stood up and rubbed his hands on his legs. “Kit’s in the car, Cougar. I’ll be back in a few.”

“I’m pretty!” Jake called after him. Cougar grinned at that. “You think I’m pretty, don’t you?”

“Cougar’s always had questionable taste,” Clay put in, stepping into Jake’s limited view. It was getting more limited, actually. He really wasn’t feeling great.

“Sir, are you sure you should be the one—”

“Shut up, Jensen.” But Clay had a smile on his face.

“Shutting up, sir,” he replied, closing his eyes and letting the feel of Jenny’s hand on his head make him forget Cougar’s fist in his belly. The bleeding had better stop soon or he was going to pass out from the pain.

Or maybe he wouldn’t wait for the bleeding to…

* * * * *

Pooch was the only one in Jenny’s house when Jake nearly fell down the stairs 2 days later. Clay and Cougar were at the local hardware big box, replacing Jenny’s door, and Jenny and Aisha were out shopping—and wasn’t that an image Pooch didn’t need? Aisha being domestic. Beth was at school, back to her old self, like nothing happened. She was more like her uncle than he wanted her to be.

“Whoa!” Pooch called, as he rushed the stairs and caught Jake halfway down. “What the hell are you thinking? Get back up there.”

“Jenny doesn’t believe in televisions in the bedroom and I’m going insane,” Jake said firmly, pushing against him with more strength than he'd shown in a while. “I need shlock now.” He plowed his way relentlessly into the family room and sat very carefully on the couch.

“You’re fucking nuts, you know that?” Pooch chuckled and headed for the kitchen for a beer. Hell if he was getting Jake one, though. Cougar would kill him.

Once Cougar had gotten the bleeding slowed down at the cabin, they’d all said a prayer of thanks that Jake’s damn boot knife was so small. The wound was bloody, having nicked a larger vein, but it wasn’t deep enough to worry about the gut infection Jake had gotten last time. Cougar had been able to clean and stitch it up while the rest of them figured out how to take care of Harry.

The word had gotten out about Harry even this far into the backwoods of upstate New York, so Clay’s wildly improbable story to the local police that he’d gone to the wrong cabin and found the “horrible scene of a _dead guy_!” was swallowed. Small town police find big time escapee dead. Film at eleven.

He, Cougar, and Aisha had, of course, already been on their way back to New Hampshire, Jake unconscious in the back seat of the van with his feet in Jenny’s lap. She’d slept with a peacefulness that was almost disturbing, given the night’s events.

When Pooch commented on it, though, Aisha had looked down at her from her spot hanging over the seat behind and said quietly, “There’s nothing better than that first taste of real freedom. Once the blood gets washed away, you find out there’s something other than pain out there, after all.”

Pooch decided right then he didn’t want to know Aisha’s family secrets. Jake’s were fucking disturbing enough.

“Hey, Linwood?” came a high, whiny call from the family room. “Can I _please_ have a Mountain Dew?”

“You got out of bed to watch freaking television, J.,” he said, grabbing the requested soda anyway and heading back. “You can get up and get your own soda. And wow, but you are too damn whiny to—” He stopped dead in the doorway at the blank look on Jake’s face. “Fuck, J., I’m sorry.”

Jake sat silent for a long moment before he breathed out slowly. He didn’t say a word, and Pooch didn’t know what to say, either. He’d already said too damn much. He remembered something Coug had said while they were driving back and the Jensens were both asleep.

“Are you ready to forget this one, too?” he asked carefully, hoping it was the right tactic.

Jensen stiffened for a second and looked like he was about to say something—about to deal with something he’d spent his whole damn life just living past.

Instead he flashed a grin. “Yeah. I was ready to forget this one before it started.” He looked up, a little boy smile back on his face. Almost seemed real. “Now can I have my Mountain Dew?”

“You are one crazy individual, J.,” Pooch said, handing over the caffeine. “And if you call me Linwood again, I’m gonna take your head off.”

Jake didn’t look at him, just ignored him and smiled wider and kept on scrolling through the cable guide. “Oh hey!” he said, chuckling and grabbing a pillow to press to his stomach from the pain of the movement. “It’s _Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer_! God, that’s a horrible movie.” He switched to it and turned up the sound. “I always wanted to be the Human Torch, though. How cool would that be?”

“Not cool at all, J. You’d be on fire.”

Jake looked at him in surprise. “Funny. I knew there was a reason I hung out with you.” He sobered suddenly and Pooch wondered what was coming. “You know I tried to call, right? I was kind of… not in my right mind when I left to go after them, but if my phone hadn’t fallen out of my pocket and I hadn’t had my brains smashed in… I would’ve called this time.”

“Yeah, I know,” Pooch replied. And he did, too. “It's all good. It’s family, right?”

Jake smiled. Wasn’t his first taste, maybe, but Pooch could see the feeling of freedom in his friend’s eyes.

“Hey J.?” He said suddenly, watching the Human Torch fly down to land and turn into a normal guy in a costume. “You don’t think that Johnny guy looks a little like you?”

Jensen studied the actor on the screen for a minute. “Nah,” he finally said. “I’m prettier.”

“I thought we settled that at the cabin, man. Jenny? Pretty. Beth? Gonna be dangerously pretty—”

“Pooch!”

“You? Not pretty.”

“Yeah, I’ll let you fight that out with Cougar, then,” Jake replied, taking a sip of his drink and wrapping his arms around the pillow he still kept pushed into his belly.

“Don’t worry,” Pooch said blithely. “I can take him.”

And he settled in to watch a bad movie.

With family.

* * * * *  
the end


End file.
